I have been working
in the motion picture business for the last 20 years. I
have been doing embedded motion control projects for the
last 10. You can see some of the fruits of my labor at
Clairmont
Camera's web site. I invented the "Squishy
Lens", and the "Image Shaker", for which I
have been awarded a personal certificate of achievement
by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. You can
see them in action in movies like Minority Report,
Jurassic Park III, X-Men, 3 Kings, Starship Troopers,
Saving Private Ryan, Species II, as well as T.V. shows
like Star Trek Voyager. The Image Shaker is used to
simulate explosions, and is used a lot now, since it's
easier than shaking the camera. The squishy lens
provides an interesting distortion effect. It's used in
the first shot of Minority Report.

I am
presently employed by a company called Panavision.

Hardware and Software

I have programmed
Motorola, Intel, and pic processors in machine code,
assembly, FORTH, BASIC, and C. I have also programmed in
FORTRAN, C++, and LabView.

Projects

I have finally launched my Robogeeks site.
Robogeeks is geared towards beginners, but with a lot of
useful information and ideas for intermediate and advanced
users. Hopefully, it will help pay for my expensive
robotics hobby as well.

My battlebot is on hold,
as I don't have a place to work on it right now. I hope
that in 6 months or so, this will change. Nemesis robotics
is where the last fruits of my efforts can be found.

The group of beginners which I mentor has a site
dedicated to biological
emulating robots. I hope to explore Artifical Neural
Networks, and publish the efforts there.

Robots

I have built a hand full of little
robots, mostly recyclable.

Ratbot, a 3 wheeled
holy roller, no mpu, just sensors, 555's( a lot of
555's ), and transistors

After recently acquiring a bunch of motors from a couple of
different manufacturers, I did my good deed, and donated
112 motors to the DPRG, giving 2 encoded, coreless
gearmotors to each paid member. It was my goal when i got
these different motors to spread them out to the robotics
community, to do the most good. It looks like I am
succeeding

The motor donation project has gone well so far.
I have been getting really nice coreless motors, and
donating/selling/keeping them.

The Thousand Oaks Robotics Club is moving along. I am
working on getting an oscilliscope, power supply, soldering
irons, and vises. We have been working on solar bots, and
my 12 whegged robotic centepede.

IsoPod:

My article in Circuit Cellar came out recently. I have
gotten good feedback so far...